After years of sluggish sales, more people are buying new cars again, dealers say.

Curt Wierda, new sales manager at Barber Ford in Holland, said that each year, more buyers who have been putting off buying a new car came in.

"Our lowest (year) was '08, and it’s come up every year since," he said. "It’s been a steady climb every single year."

It might be a national trend, but one that’s no less true in an area famed for fiscally cautious Dutch people. In Ottawa County, 7,883 new cars were sold in 2012, according to the Michigan Auto Dealer Association. That’s not as many as were sold in 2006 — 8,426 — but still substantially above where they were at their low point in 2009 at 5,648.

The numbers tell a similar story in Allegan County: 2,309 new cars were sold in 2012, slightly less than the 2,567 sold in 2006 prior to the recession, but way above their nadir, at 1,725 in 2009.

Growing new car sales are good news for a regional economy that’s largely fed by manufacturers and suppliers in the auto industry.

On Tuesday in Holland, economist George Erickcek displayed charts showing the beginnings of an economic recovery. They showed, he said, a state economy that’s dependent on manufacturing. And Michigan manufacturing, in turn, is heavily dependent on people buying new cars.

"The demand is there, it’s just the comfort level of consumers out there," said Larry Parker, program development director at the Michigan Auto Dealer Association. "If your neighbor is out of work, you wonder if you should be buying a car."

People buy for different reasons, but dealers say pent-up demand played a role.

"We’re seeing a lot of trade-ins with 140,000 to 200,000 miles on them, which shows that there was some pent-up demand," Wierda said. "They’ve been waiting to buy that new vehicle."

Consumer competition for used cars has driven their prices up, said Ross DeVries, new car sales manager for VerHage Mitsubishi. The gap between the cost of a late model used car and a new one is narrowing.

Consumers, too, are realizing there are advantages to owning a new car.